Posts By: Paul Levine

By Paul Levine Anthony Doerr ruined my vacation. He also destroyed the confidence of blossoming writers and set an impossibly high standard for other novelists. What’s the matter, Tony? Winning the Pulitzer wasn’t enough? Doerr is the author of All the Light We Cannot See, the lyrical, compassionate, hauntingly gorgeous novel that won this year’s…

By Paul Levine I blame Carl Hiaasen. Let me explain. It was 1986. I was a partner in the Miami office of a mammoth law firm with offices from Philadelphia to Tokyo. I specialized in “complex civil litigation.” Upside: Financial security. Downside: Boring work. Even worse than the daily tedium, I’d abandoned my true self….

By Paul Levine Precisely 25 years after his first appearance in print, Jake Lassiter is back. The book is BUM RAP, and it’s off to a fast start, ranking Number One in the “legal thrillers,” “mysteries” and “thrillers” categories in the Amazon Kindle Store. Overall, with rankings changing hourly, it’s been skittering between number four…

Hard-boiled dialogue…the literary equivalent of a quick punch to the gut. “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.” “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.” Those hard-boiled lines come from the mind of tough-guy P.I. Philip Marlowe, which is to say from author Raymond…

By Paul Levine At a conference recently, I was asked, “Do you write mystery novels or thrillers?” “Yes,” I answered with a smile. Okay, it’s a wise ass reply. There are discernible differences between the two genrea. As Wikipedia succinctly explains, the thriller hero must stop the villain’s plans, rather than uncover a crime that…